How to Position and Animate the Camera

In Harmony, you can animate objects by drawing them on their individual layer, then positioning them at different locations on different keyframes across the timeline, creating a motion path. The same principle can be applied to the scene's camera, since it is a layer itself.

Adding a Camera

By default, a scene does not have a camera layer. In order to be able to tweak the scene's camera angle and position, you must add one to your scene.

In the Timeline view, click the Add Layer button and, in the pop-up menu, select Camera.

From the top menu, select Insert > Camera.

A new camera layer is added to the scene and appears in the Timeline view.

Although it is possible to have several cameras in the same scene, you can only view your scene using one camera at a time. This can be useful if you are still working on your scene composition and have different camera set-ups to try out.

A Peg layer appears directly above the Camera layer and is automatically attached to it.

Positioning the Camera

The scene action occurs inside the camera frame, so it’s really important to set it up correctly. You can adjust the camera resolution as well as other related parameters in the Scene Settings window, accessible from the Scene top menu.

To reposition camera directly, you can move it using the Transform or Translate tool, you can rotate it using the Rotate tool and you can zoom it using the l Scale tool, from the Advanced Animation toolbar. Alternatively, you can type in its coordinates directly in the Layer Properties view. If you rigged the camera under a peg, you can do all sorts of manipulations to it using the Transform tool alone. The following steps indicate how to manipulate the camera when it is rigged under a peg.

In the Camera view, click on the camera frame. The camera frame is a thin rectangle around your scene's stage.

A control box appears around the camera frame.

Do one of the following:

To move the camera frame: Position the cursor over any of its edges or over the centre. When the cursor becomes , click and drag on the camera frame to reposition it.

To zoom in or zoom out: Position the cursor over one of the corners of the camera frame. When the cursor becomes , click and drag on the corner to resize the camera frame. Shrinking the camera frame will zoom in on your scene, and expanding it will zoom out.

To rotate the camera: Position the cursor just outside one of its corners. When the cursor becomes , click and drag to rotate the camera frame.

Animating the Camera

A scene's camera can be manipulated and animated just like any other layer. It is listed in the Timeline view and you can use the same tools and selection modes to offset or animate it. However, the camera layer itself is static, which means it keeps the same position and angle throughout the whole scene. In order to be able to animate the camera, you need to connect it to a peg layer, which can be animated, and which will directly affect the position and angle of the camera.